244 POETIC ART

complexes. This fact is simply one of the normal peculiarities
of the psyche, and for a man to be unaware of the existence
of an autonomous complex merely betrays a rather high
degree of unconsciousness. For instance every typical
attitude that is to a certain extent differentiated shows
a tendency to become an autonomous complex, and in the
majority of cases actually becomes one. Every instinct
too has more or less the character of an autonomous complex,
In itself, therefore, there is nothing morbid in an autonomous
complex, only its stored-up energy and its disturbing appear-
ance on the scene may often involve suffering or illness.

How does an autonomous complex arise ? From some
cause or another—a closer investigation of which would at
this point lead us too far afield—a hitherto unconscious
region of the psyche is thrown into activity, and this activation
undergoes a certain development and extension through the
inclusion of related associations. The energy employed in
this operation is naturally withdrawn from consciousness,
unless the latter prefers to identify itself with the complex,
But where this is not the case there results what Janet has
termed an 'abaissement du niveau mental'. The intensity
of conscious interests and activities gradually fades, where-
upon, either an apathetic inactivity—a condition very
common with artists—or a regressive development of the
conscious functions takes place, namely, a descent to their
infantile or archaic prestages; hence something akin to
a degeneration. The 'parties inferieures des fonctions*
force themselves to the front, the instinctive rather than the
ethical, the naively infantile instead of the deliberated and
mature, the unadapted in place of the adapted. This also
is shown in the lives of many artists. From the energy
thus withdrawn from the conscious control of the personality
the autonomous complex develops.

But in what does the autonomous creative complex consist ?
Of this we can know next to nothing so long as the completed
work offers us no insight into its foundations. The work